Welcome to Oregon

It was dark, cold, and snowy when we pulled into the small town of Klamath Falls, Oregon.  I had been sick the week before we had to leave California and was now sporting a huge cold sore which covered my whole upper lip clear up to my nostrils.  I was pretty miserable.  To top it off Kathi, now just a year and a half old,  got really sick on the way.  She was running a fever and throwing up every few minutes...at least it seemed that often.  So it was a great relief when we saw the lights of the city come into view.  We checked in at the first motel we could find, tired and ready to crash.  But Kathi's temperature continued to climb and she looked SO bad.  I began to panic because we didn't know who we could contact this late at night.  Our only option was to try and find a hospital with an emergency room.

The doctor on call took one look at her, touched her forehead then admitted her to the hospital.  They immediately connected her to an I.V.(she was dehydrated), and tied her hands to the side of the crib so she wouldn't pull it out.  It just killed me to see her cry and struggle to get free.  She just kept looking at me with those "help me Mom" eyes and all I could do was rub her little forehead and talk to her.  It was one of the most stressful times of my life.  

I stayed at the hospital all night while Jim stayed with the children at the motel.  Kathi was released after two days in the hospital, but the doctor looked at me and said, "You should do something about sore on your mouth.  It looks infected."  He recommended a doctor who took one look at me, soaked a gauze pad some sort of antiseptic, and just wiped the whole scab off my lip.  I now had this huge open sore that kept bleeding and bleeding. It did eventually heal, Kathi recovered, and we began looking for a place to put down roots.

We settled into a small house in a community called Wocus on the north end of town.  It was a cinder block house (one of about a dozen) with a large rock fireplace.  Down the center of the little dead end street was an island of grass where the kids could play.  The one undesirable thing was that our little street came off a major highway.  Fortunately, the kids were very good about staying away from that busy road.

It wasn't long before the children made friends and through them we made friends with the parents.  And, of course, we had instant friends at church.  Although we had kind of had a rough beginning in Klamath Falls our stay would soon become one full of happy and memorable experiences.